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disguise. The first word I thought of was: clockwork . It was a clockwork voice on an ancient phone, speaking to me across a line that should have been dead.
    Â Â "So now you've found me," I said. I was scared, but for some reason my voice masked the fear. I had already gone through so much by now that even this strange turn of events failed to break through my armour. I stared at the pitted walls, the outof-date wallpaper, the smeared, unidentifiable pictures held like specimens behind dirty glass in cheap plastic frames.
    Â Â "Yes. I've found you." If I strained hard enough, I thought that I might hear the cogs and springs creaking.
    Â Â "So what do you want?"
    Â Â Another pause in the conversation, but this one was slightly longer. It contained the sound of gears shifting; a suggestion of mechanisms struggling to cope. I wasn't sure if I was actually hearing these things, or if I was simply aware of them at another level entirely.
    Â Â "I want to hire you. To find someone."
    Â Â I closed my eyes. "And who do you need me to find?" I wanted to open my eyes but found that I couldn't. Suddenly I no longer had any desire to look at the room, at the bland walls and the stained floorboards, at the flickering light of morning as it hovered like a killer outside the grubby windows.
    Â Â "I don't know. That's what I want you to tell me." Then the line went dead. There was no dial tone; no sound at all. There had never been a connection in the first place – I had checked the phone when I arrived.
    Â Â I opened my eyes. I was alone, all alone.
    Â Â I was alone, as always, with the dead.

 
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FOUR
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    Sarah sat up in bed. She glanced over at Benson, where he lay with his hands clutched tightly to his chest. He always slept like that. Curled against himself, as if seeking protection: warding off his demons. It looked uncomfortable, but he seemed to sleep soundly that way. Sarah stared at him for a while, wondering what his dreams were made of, and then she looked away, unable to stomach the sight any longer.
    Â Â Sometimes, usually after sex, he repulsed her. She had never come to terms with her sexuality, not after what had happened in her past. It was part of her pain, a facet of her private damage. She glanced at the floor, at the handcuffs cast aside near the litter bin and the knotted scarves bunched up in the corner. Benson's wrists had been red when she'd taken them off, but this time there had been no swelling and the skin wasn't broken. They would be fine by morning, or late afternoon – when he would probably wake up with a raging hard-on and a craving for coffee. Last time she had not been so gentle, and he had been forced to wear sweatbands on his wrists for a week to hide the bruises.
    Â Â She wished that she hadn't invited him back last night (or this morning, as their shift had ended at 4am). But after drying their uniforms as best they could on the station's crappy radiators and signing off duty, they'd both been shaken enough to desire the other's company. Any company, if she was honest – because it was better than being alone, especially after what they had discovered inside the house in Roundhay.
    Â Â The poor broken thing they had found tied into the dentist's chair, with its small skull and the small holes.
    Â Â Initial findings had revealed that the owner of the house – a Mrs Celia Johnson – was staying with her sister in Brighton. She had been away for a week, and knew nothing of the break-in and what had subsequently been done inside her home. The dead boy had not yet been identified, but the smart money was on him being a runaway – a lost or abandoned soul nobody would even miss. The woman's late husband had been a dentist, a fact which explained the antique dental chair and other related apparatus found in the same room. Explained it, but did nothing to render the scene harmless: it looked like